Cancer causes one in every four US deaths and is the second leading cause of death among Americans. Among cancers, breast cancer represents the most common form of cancer among women. Each year, more than 180,000 and 1 million women in the U.S. and worldwide, respectively, are diagnosed with breast cancer. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women between ages 50-55, and is the most common non-preventable malignancy in women in the Western Hemisphere. It is estimated that 2,167,000 women in the United States are currently living with breast cancer (National Cancer Institute, Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (NCI SEER) program, Cancer Statistics Review (CSR), on the world wide web at seer.ims.nci.nih.gov/Publications/CSR1973 (1998)). Among women in the United States, breast cancer is the second most common form of cancer, after skin cancer, and ranks second only to lung cancer among causes of cancer deaths in women. Nearly 86% of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer are likely to still be alive five years later, though 24% of them will die of breast cancer after 10 years, and nearly half (47%) will die of breast cancer after 20 years. Moreover, based on cancer rates from 1995 through 1997, a report from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) estimates that about 1 in 8 women in the United States (approximately 12.8 percent) will develop breast cancer during her lifetime (NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results Program (SEER) publication SEER Cancer Statistics Review 1973-1997).
Current therapeutic targets usually aim to inhibit the activity of oncogenes whose expression accounts for a significant number of patients. However, only very few such targets have been identified in breast cancer. Uncovering new therapeutic targets is an ongoing task challenging the breast cancer research community.
Accordingly, improved compositions and methods for the treatment or prevention of neoplasia are required.